Martian Dust
by musubi.kei
Summary: They don’t embrace; they don’t kiss; not like lovers do.// 6x9 Lemon. It's another day on Mars.


_Inspired by 30_kisses themes #13 (余計な鎖 – Excessive Locks) and #24 (おやすみ –Goodnight), and a line from Gaiman and Pratchett's 'Good Omens'. Low fluff lemon. 6x9._

_Gundam Wing © SOTSU AGENCY - SUNRISE - ANB  
This is a work of derivative Fanfiction. No claims are made towards the ownership of intellectual rights pertaining to the metaseries.  
**...**  
_

「**Martian Dust**」  
— A.C. 201, ?

She walked in on him mid-stroke. Neither had the good graces to be embarrassed.

"Noin." Zechs raised a perfectly arched eyebrow in question.

"Don't worry, everything's still standing, nothing's blown up. Yet." She winced wearily at the cynicism and threw the damp towel around her shoulders into a corner, narrowly missing his favourite —only— coffee mug.

Mars was tiresome. If it wasn't some life-threatening crisis, it was backbreaking routine or absolute boredom, and not necessarily in that order. The closest colony was twenty-two hours flight away and the only entertainment broadcast anyone on the red rock could receive was, ironically enough, the L-4 weather channel. L-4 had great weather. The colony cluster was centrally programmed for cool, temperate climates all year round. Mars had sweltering heat waves and sandstorms, in that order. They have been here four years, which was hardly time enough for things to change.

She didn't say anything as she approached him where he sat in bed and straddled his bare lap. He watched with an unchanging expression as she pushed the crotch of her shorts aside and took his tip into her. She was the only female he knew who wore boxer shorts for underwear. Most of the military women he had known were either boyshorts or sensible knickers. It wasn't a good move to go commando unless you had absolutely no choice. The other women had shown more range and versatility, but she was the only one out of the one hundred and sixteen he had ever known to wear boxers.

"Rough day?" He inquired lightly, unmoving. One of his hands was still wrapped around his shaft.

"I hate this place." She muttered, repositioning his hands to grasp her hip and waist. He grabbed her obligingly as she went the distance to the base of his manhood with a little snarl that rumbled deep in her chest. "Too much dust." She said. "Too much red."

Noin hated red, a trait that has always made Zechs slightly uncomfortable around her when in his OZ uniform, no matter how sincerely she had expressed her appreciation for the way it brought out his colouring.

He dug his fingers into her cool flesh and thrust up into her. "You don't have to be here, Noin."

She glowered. He kept thrusting. Steady, deliberate, stabs into the centre of her heat.

"And you do? You're not the only one who wants to see this project succeed."

"I'm a dead man," he replied. They could be having an absent chat at the breakfast bar, for all the ease in his voice. "You still have a life you could go back to."

"Which one?" She barked in a short laugh, nails in his shoulders, levering against him to match the rhythm. "Babysitting your little sister or running errands for Une?"

"Either, both." He shrugged, clutching her closer and harder in response to the building pressure in their joined bodies. "You were good at it."

Whatever retort she might have given him was swallowed in the soft, tight, moan she made as he carried her through her release.

Sex was not a new sport to them, although they had surprised each other when a tentative foray into that territory while on the brink of sexual desperation some years back had apparently changed nothing about their relationship. Each had been as relieved as the other not to lose their best friend and MVP. They still saw other people when they could and they still talked to each other about their lusts and interests when they could. They also screwed like bunnies in the privacy of their quarters when they must, which was becoming more and more frequent, directly proportionate to the drop in activity in their separate social lives.

It was through no fault or design of their own, really. They have simply been isolated on this planet for too long. Anyone who has had any inclinations towards either of them have had a go, and eventually found someone else to settle down with. It was the insecurity of not knowing if Zechs or Noin will return in one piece at the end of any given day. It was her tendency to blindly push a gun into someone's face when startled awake and his propensity for making blood-curdling cries in his frequent nightmares. It was the strain of having to run for the other whenever something went wrong with their one, and watching them perfectly understand each other without words, the way no one else can. There was always something.

As soon as she started coming down, he had her on her back, still rooted in her warmth.

"Done?"

"No."

"Good."

Where his previous motions were restrained, now he was forward and forceful, taking what he needs from her without remorse. She arches with him, urging him on, and when he finds his own relief, he takes her with him.

They were comfortable about the sex. They don't talk about it. They don't look away. They stare, always, calmly, at themselves reflected in the other's eyes, tinted ice blue and urchin purple.

He grabs a foot and turns her on her side, allowing his hot breath to cover her sole as he carefully grazes his teeth across it and hitches it over his shoulder, raking his fingers through her pubic curls. Sustaining his attention had never been her problem. She hooks the leg beneath her around his hips. He lets her grind into him as he pulls her tank top over her head and loosely secures her wrists to themselves with it. She holds on to his hand, rubbing his calloused palm with her thumbs. He swears in French. She grins. And to punish her, he dips his lips to her chest and worries a dusky, swollen, nipple between tantalising flicks of his velvet tongue.

His long, fine hair brushed seductively over her bare skin and all her world narrowed down to the maddening torment, his thumb circling her glistening jewel, his mouth lapping at her sensitive breasts, his fingers firmly woven into hers, his desire stirring strongly within her. Her breathing comes raggedly as she writhes for more. "Easy now," he chuckled, soft and breathless.

"Damn it, Peacecraft," she growled dangerously. "Don't tease."

She only calls him Peacecraft when she's pissed. He grabbed her by the knee and hip then, and plunged in, ever deeper, ever stronger, playing catch-up with their racing hearts. When she quivers and gasps, he clapped his left hand hard on her noise. She bites, hisses, and he spasms against her beautiful, rose-petal flesh.

They don't embrace; they don't kiss; not like lovers do.

He doesn't tell her he was beating off to the sounds of her and the telltale patter of the adjustable showerhead in their shared shower, and she doesn't tell him it was the memory of him reaching across her for pepper at lunch that sent her there. Well, that and the Martian dust that got into everything.

He nuzzles her freshly washed hair, savouring the passion radiating off them, and reminds himself to get her some nice shampoo when he can, instead of the harsh ration-soap. Maybe something camomile. It would amuse him to realise she was thinking the same at him as she nibbled on his hand and wrapped her hands in his bright, blonde, tresses. Except with the scent of rosehips.

They do it again, for good measure. No words pass between them. He drags her over the edge thrice more before coming together with her, twice with practiced artists' fingers, and another with something much thicker and more erotic.

Watching her stretch out on the floor in the aftermath like a cat after a long nap, he propped himself up on the bed and smirked down at her.

"Feeling better?"

"Much," she crinkled her face at him and primly stuck her tongue out. "Thank you."

He pinched her nose and pronounced her cheeky. She hit him in the face with his pillow.

Cleaned up, they snuck out to the plexi-domed hydroponics conservatory with thin blankets and sprawled out next to each other on the Astroturf under the stars.

"I'm pretty sure I locked my door, Noin." He said as the quiet of space takes them in.

"Oh, you did."

"Ah." She smiled privately at his soft expression of enlightenment. Something about it always made her feel as though she had won. "Can it be fixed, or do I need to requisition a new one?"

"I've been thinking," she murmured lightly, "it seems excessive. We are sharing a suite with one of the toughest front doors." They were, in a sense. The high-security Preventers' Command Centre on Mars was their exclusive domain, with its own adjoining hygiene facilities and sleeping quarters. They would only be locking each other out.

He caught her eye just as she turned them back towards the stars. Sometimes, when you're standing too close to someone, it gets more difficult to understand what they are saying, no matter how well you communicate across a distance. It's the same reason people standing in Trafalgar Square cannot see England.

"I'm not sure I understand, Noin."

"It's nothing, Zechs," she smiled back at him, touching her temple to his. "Good night."

The hushed sounds of nutrient drips and maintenance subroutines fill up the silence as they drift off to starry dreams.

"Noin?" He uncurled his fingers to softly brush her hand in the dark.

"Hm?" She is at her most feminine in these cusps of wakefulness and sleep.

"If, when we leave this place," he whispers quietly, afraid to break the spell, "and nothing better comes along… will you consider becoming Mrs. Peacecraft?"

He listens to her breathing, imagining the serene rise and fall of her chest, and thinks, for a moment that she is asleep.

"Of course, Mr. Peacecraft." She whispers just as gently, lacing her fingers into his.

"Thank you, Noin."

"Good night, Zechs."

**...**


End file.
